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Revolutionary Wants Technology To Transform Libya
pbahra writes in with the story of Khaled el Mufti, the network-security engineer who was in charge of providing telecommunications for the Libyan revolution. "It isn't often you get the chance to meet a real revolutionary. It is a term cheapened by misuse, but Khaled el Mufti is a revolutionary. It is no exaggeration to say that the role he played in the Libyan uprising last year was crucial; had he and his telecoms team failed, it isn't hard to think that Col. Muammar Gadhafi might still be in power. Today, Mr. Mufti is a telecoms adviser to the interim government and heads the e-Libya initiative, a bold plan to use the transformative powers of technology to modernize the Libyan state, overturning 40 years of corruption and misrule under Gadhafi. Mr. Mufti is an unlikely revolutionary, a softly spoken network-security engineer with a degree from Imperial College in London. Almost by chance he was in his native Libya when the revolution took place, working on a project with BT in the capital, Tripoli."
Let him help technology people find political office so their government doesn't become perverted by lawyers and a corrupt judicial system. Long live Libya!
known as Dllya. Please relink your programs as approprate.
The thought of hanging myself at my student loan organization doesn't bug me as much when I think it might make a differ
Yes.. in Libya for the revolution almost by chance. Just like some of those fine revolutionary leaders that also happened to be in Libya 'by chance' after the CIA set them up with plane tickets.
yeah, right, a network security guy from UK just happened to be there, and just happened to take a crucial role "by chance". All the while (also by chance of course) the british boots were on the ground.
Dead within a year.
indeed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_African_Satellite_Communication_Organization
http://articles.janes.com/articles/Janes-Space-Systems-and-Industry/Rascom-Libya.html
"'ground network includes gateway Earth stations and low cost," -
It made parts of Africa spend less on Intelsat and a lot less on big telco interconnection fees.
Now the West is back and wants their telco interconnection fees back... all of them.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MD14Ak02.html
No wonder The Wall St. Journal is gushing.
Into the Nightmarish Technology Cult of the Empire of the SANDS!
Bow before them or die!
Autobots, move out!
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
According to Wikipedia, the copyright term in Libya is "Life + 25 years with 50-year minimum (as of 1968; may have changed since)". That's 25 years less than in Canada and New Zealand, 45 years less than in the European Union and Australia, and who knows how much less than the US.
He should be able to do work with that and create something beautiful for the world... even better if he can get the term of protection down to 20 years flat. Oh... such a nice dream. The reality will of course be that those who control the US Government have their puppets on the case already.
You didn't keep it down long. LULZ!
Libya would do well to make sure anybody medically considered morbidly obese should not be allowed to vote, breed, or drive. Don't be like America with a bunch of fucking disgusting lardass fatbodies who ALSO have entitlement complexes.
Lybia !=Singapore
I see it coming: technology under the Sharia.
Not saying there isn't great potential for good there, but I don't expect to see it. Unfortunately, the Islamists in Libya and Egypt would like nothing better than to use technology the same way Iran does -- to stifle any dissent from the political/religious straightjacket that is Islamic fundamentalism. I hope for the best, but don't like some aspects of the political momentum I see in the "Arab spring". It seems like they are dumping corrupt secular dictators, just to prop up theoretically less corrupt, but still abjectly fascist slave masters wielding Sharia law.
It is not the technology, rather it is the opportunity to practice the art of systems design.
Design what?
Designing a whole government is an impossibly huge job. Divide the problem into parts and solve the parts. One big part to fix: How about resolve one key problem that plagues governments worldwide... how to vote the incumbent out of office before the incumbent takes control of the voting system.
Why not use cell phone and Internet technology, together with some statistical sampling to overcome the physical problems of holding elections in Libya? The problem is to be able to vote a leader out of office before that leader seizes control of the election process.
And the technology is already proven itself ... several times over.
USA: starry-eyed techs go into IT in order to make our lives better through technology, end up having to update thoughtless websites, and hate it.
Middle East: starry-eyed techs go into IT with hopes of bringing democracy to their countries, end up working for Islamic Brotherhood and designing suicide vests, and hate it.
See, we're all the same after all....
Futurist Traditionalism
My hats off to the Libyan IT team that kept the communications going.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
EU still owes them some billions of euros. Where are they?
I taught my kid how to read, so in your opinion that give me the right to kill him?
I taught my kid how to read, so in your opinion that give me the right to kill him?
If you are in Libya and you and your son are of the Libyan scumbag specimen -- Your son might just rape and kill you in the future
Look I like tech. I like telco tech too. But at the end of the day - if this artefact has reached our newsliness it's because the modern tech that will be introduced will be of the popular kind, not the anominizing kind. Each to their own.
If a village in the (recent) news has fallen to pro - gadafi ppl, then they'll want to be kept an eye on - especially in this transformative period. (because presumarbly gadafi was not the ideal candidate to lead that country)
Maybe in all the modelling that has been done in the last 50 years this crazy capitalism idea works!! Maybe country-by-country.... but as super powers go, maybe it's not going to work if "races/countries/etc" get p'd off by not being #1. Just one-way-to-look-at-it.
No cause for optimism here, based on precedent:
"In 1970, Stafford Beer was approached by Salvador Allende's elected socialist government of Chile to develop a national real-time computerised system Cybersyn to run the entire Chilean economy. This project was never completed. When Allende was removed from power by General Augusto Pinochet's 1973 coup, the Cybersyn project was abandoned."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stafford_Beer
Democracy is probably the last thing on people's mind. First they need electricity and water. Then they need food. Then they need shelter (actually this is a big one considering that thousands of building were almost completely destroyed in the war)....then the big one, they need JOBS. They need industry to get back on its feet, children to go back to school, hospitals to reopen, supermarkets to get restocked. Democracy? Elections? Who cares about that when you have roving bands of heavily armed militia trying to boss everyone around and having turf wars with the tribe next door? No, law and order first, then redevelopment, true democracy comes much later. It's a long process, decades in fact.
Gaddafi was a BAD guy, he funded insurgencies and terrorist groups around the world for forty years. He kept his population in poverty, neglected infustructure, and enriched his own family. He also tortured and murdered thousands of his own people with foreign mercenaries. The opportunity came for the west to end his reign of terror and they took it. There is no need for conspiracies.
Telecoms won't be the big money maker for Libya, solar thermal will. The EU wants to build some massive plants over there, and Libya will be happy to work with us because they know that oil is running out and going out of fashion.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Good luck to you. If you can get technology into the hands of people it empowers them. The fear of big brother and a panopticon society works both ways. Those cameras can be in the hands of little brother and can point at cops. It keeps them honest, reduces waste, and makes life better for all.
I don't know how well he'll do with e-commerce, but some basics for government transparency would do a lot for a budding government. Hell, it's doing a lot for my government.
Stories like this are the sort of thing that makes me want to show up with a crate of OLPCs and start teaching kids python.
A highly trained undercover MI6 spy just happened to be there when the revolution started?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
"Almost by chance" :) Guess we all had our share of James Bond movies in a quantity which makes us suspicious to such statements ;)
"quack quack quack conspiracy theory..."
A major point of the article I posted was that the situation in Libya was very much unlike the Arab Spring in places like Tunisia and Egypt.
The latter pipes gas from Turkmenistan to India. Again, what the fuck has that got to do with the US? What do either of these have to do with oil and the petrodollar?
Why would the U.S. goad the world into using only dollars for purchasing oil and gas without creating ways for them to access those resources? Also, the article looks at the role that international banking plays... no one is saying that its a simplistic U.S.-against-the-world contest, although it is true that the U.S. establishment is interested in maximizing globalization. It is also true that uniting Africa under a common gold-backed currency would have created a continent-wide hold out from globalization (which includes unfettered corporate access to oil).
The rest of your 'argument' (which is little more than a mixture of ad-hominem and 'we just don't do those things here' posturing) doesn't hold up well either.